Gracefully Abroad: El Calafate
By Grace Carballo ‘17
Last weekend I set several alarms for 3 AM Friday morning, strapped on my massive backpack filled to the brim with assorted snacks and jackets, double-checked I had my passport, and hopped into a taxi with my friend and fellow Trojan, Francesca, for our obscenely early flight (saving some moola, gaining some time) to El Calafate in the southern part of Argentina, a region called Patagonia. It may come as a surprise to some of you that your trendy-yet-functional-cold-weather-Patagonia-brand gear is named after a real place, but I can now officially confirm this fact first-hand and let me tell you, it sure is a beauty.
Sweet Francesca had chosen her seat strategically, weeks in advance when we booked the flights, with the intention of having a window seat both for the little nook it provides for sleeping against and the incredible first glimpses it would offer of this magical place we couldn’t wait to get to. Unfortunately, you can’t always get what you want.
Her misnomered “window seat” was nothing more than a wall much to her dismay and my entertainment.
We didn’t dwell on this initial letdown too much and promptly fell into a restless sleep for most of the flight. Just to give you an idea of the sheer size of Argentina, Buenos Aires is pretty central and even to get to El Calafate, which is the starting point for many a Patagonia journey because it has an airport, takes 3 full hours by plane. It’s also possible to do the voyage by bus, if you have 24 hours to kill, but we were trying to miss as little class as possible because as nearly every adult I know has told me at one point or another, “School comes first.”
We landed in El Calafate finally and bought bus tickets to the center of town, of course paying in cash, which luckily we’d been forewarned about by other international students who’d already made the journey. In Buenos Aires, I’ve been able to find a few supermarkets and restaurants that accept credit cards but even there it’s a very cash-based society. To quote a sign in a restaurant that only accepts “efectivo”, “In God we trust, all others pay cash.”
If you ever make the journey to Patagonia (which I highly recommend), plan on paying for every grocery, bus, and hostel in cash and I wouldn’t really count on many ATMs, because I saw very few. Like all the cool kids are doing these days, I used a money belt and inconspicuously had a wad of cash shaped lump under my shirt every day- discretion is key.
The day of our flight happened to also be our Web Registration day for our senior fall semester at USC so Francesca and I both had to recruit outside help to take care of it for us, knowing that our wifi would be painfully slow at best and that we’d be traveling all day. Like a well-oiled machine, I systematically created a 10 step process list for the Web Reg process with screenshots included and sent it to my little brother, who’s a visual learner. With our responsibilities delegated to love ones (unfortunately, through no fault of his own, none of my classes went through because they required D-Clearance). Francesca and I felt ready to take in all the beauty around us- and in El Calafate, you best believe that includes Perito Moreno, an unbelievable glacier.
After checking into our hostel, which was essentially a ghost town because we were pushing the end of the season and Patagonia can get bitter cold if you miss the summer months, we prowled the town for trail mix ingredients, which some might say is the main reason for hitting any trail. We found a dried fruit and nut store just a block away and together probably kept the kind owner in business until at least next summer.
With ample high energy snacks in our bags, we boarded a bus to Perito Moreno, just 10 hours after leaving our apartments that fateful early morning.
Perito Moreno is unlike anything I’ve ever seen and left me speechless or worse, repeating “¡Qué lindo!” (How beautiful!) like a broken record. It’s sheer size and other-worldly appearance left me with more questions than answers and so little wifi to seek the truth. And much like when I tackled Physics in high school, all my hypotheses were wrong.
The truth about Perito Moreno- now that I’m back in the big city and have studied the pamphlet I got from the park more closely- is that it covers 250 square km (97 square miles), 30 km (19 miles) in total length. It has a total ice depth of 170 m (558 feet) and the deepest part of the glacier is 700 m or 2,297 feet. I found this out after I explained, quite confidently, that since ice is less dense than water the glacier floats on the surface- you’d think I’d never seen an inspirational iceberg poster before!
Many consider Perito Moreno to be the 8th natural wonder of the world and I’d go so far as to say, let’s just edit the list and have it replace one of the top 7, although I’ve never seen the others and that might be a rash judgment call.
Another confusing but true fact is that Perito Moreno Glacier is one of three Patagonian glaciers that is not retreating, but rather growing. Way to take the path less traveled by most glaciers these days, Perito Moreno. This phenomenon is not yet fully understood by glaciologists nor myself but some things are better left merely appreciated, rather than understood.
Still, the field of glaciology fascinates me and if I could turn back time and had the opportunity, I would without hesitation declare it as my major. USC Catalogue of Courses, can we get a glaciology course, please? I’m willing to change my Web Registration, without making my brother do it for me this time!
Perhaps my favorite part of the day was sketching at one of the viewpoints with Francesca, who had the foresight to bring colored pencils and a sharpener. Other tourists kept monitoring our progress, under the assumption we were some kind of professionals (although Fran is actually quite gifted) and I really enjoyed watching their reactions to my portrayal.
Every so often the loud, almost cannon-like noise, of a chunk of ice falling off the glacier broke our reverie and when our drawing hands couldn’t handle the cold any longer, we bid the “glaciar” one last “chau”.
It’s very humbling to be in the presence of such powerful, natural forces and humility is something we all should seek.
Stay cool (ice pun),
Grace ‘17
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